Chemie in Unserer Zeit最新文献

Skin care is currently experiencing two developments. On the one hand, there is a move away from skin-affecting additives and an increasing use of physiological ingredients, i.e., substances that are natural to the body or are metabolised by the body without side effects. On the other hand, special attention is being paid to the harmonisation of the individual substances and the overall compositions with the skin microbiome. Phosphatidylserine – a component from the group of phospholipids that has been known for a long time – is establishing itself in skin care and does justice to both developments.

In 1935 the English chemist Howard Ward Dudley and the Scottish gynecologist Chassar Moir isolated the highly potent, uterotonic ergometrine from the sclerotia of ergot. Research teams in England and the USA recognized that all ergot alkaloids, known at that time, contained an identical building block, which was named “lysergic acid”. This new insight motivated the Swiss natural products chemist Albert Hofmann to start the medicinal-chemical and pharmacological lysergic acid research at Sandoz. For the first time, he elaborated a synthetic route to ergometrine starting from lysergic acid, in the course of which he discovered methylergometrine. In 1946 this new drug substance was approved as a therapeutic for labor induction and for the control of postpartum bleeding. During his research on the discovery of new circulation-stimulating agents, Hofmann synthetized the diethylamide of the lysergic acid (LSD) and recognized its psychotogenic activity by chance. The discovery of LSD reanimated the debate within psychiatry at that time, regarding whether endogenous “toxins” might be the reason for schizophrenia. The discovery of 5-hydroxytryptamine in the brain of vertebrate animals, and its ability to inhibit the psychotropic activity of LSD, paved the way to describing the mind and its diseases on a chemical basis. This relationship would allow the development of low molecular weight compounds for the treatment of psychiatric disorders as an innovative therapeutic option. When, at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, the inhibition of prolactine secretion by ergotoxin was shown, Sandoz, the Italian pharmaceutical company Farmitalia, and a Czech research group started drug development programs from which the new class of specific dopamine D2 receptor agonists evolved. In 1975, Sandoz introduced its 2-bromo-α-ergocryptine for the treatment of hyperprolactinemia and thereby caused female infertility, further accompanying symptoms caused by a prolactinoma, of the acromegaly or of the Parkinson's Disease. In 1975, Sandoz introduced its 2-bromo-α-ergocryptine for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease and of female infertility, acromegaly, and further symptoms caused by prolactin- and growth-hormone-secreting pituitary adenomas.

Hydrogen has the chemical symbol H and is number one in the periodic table of the elements, and special in other ways too. Today, hydrogen is more prominent than ever. No other energy-rich substance is better suited to replacing the fossil energy sources coal, oil and gas, which pollute the climate heavily through CO₂ emissions. This makes hydrogen an important element of the energy transition. Reason enough to introduce hydrogen in a short profile: the element, the H atom, H₂ molecule, ortho and para hydrogen. The difficult question of who discovered hydrogen is also discussed. Interestingly, hydrogen can be stored in gas hydrates, of all things in cages of the namesake water. The hydrogen atoms bound in functional groups are great bridge builders. Hydrogen bonds determine the structure and dynamics of water and biomolecules. And finally, hydrogen, which is colourless in itself, takes on a colour. The colour scale is determined by the production process of the hydrogen. Green is at the centre of the colour theory here, because only the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity from solar and wind energy really reduces CO₂.